“You see, the gospel was preached to us by evangelists from another province 30 years ago,” one class participant explains. “We are very grateful. But they also passed to us many of their local church traditions and cultural customs which were regarded as sacred. None of us could say anything about it.
With such rapid changes in China, we keep losing the younger generation, and our movement is barely surviving. Everyone knows we are stuck, but no one can find a way out.
The professors [in this course] show us that we need to look not only at the Bible, but also the particular context in which we minister. Our leadership team should be a bridge between the biblical world and our age and environment. I need to find out what the next generation thinks if our movement is going to advance the Kingdom of God.”
Speaking of the course lessons, a participant in the missionary training class shares:
“This is a totally new approach to missions history even though I have a Master of Divinity degree and have attended many courses on church history.
Instead of presenting piles of facts and triumphalism, our teacher challenged us to view history in its own context and try to understand how past missionaries addressed the difficulties, with both success and failure.
The theological and cultural issues we face might be different, but we need to adopt a contextualization approach to speaking the gospel meaningfully to our generation in China.”
Read Leave To Become A Blessing
Missionary Training
WHO WE ARE
The vision of this ministry is to transform China from a mission field to a mission force. Currently many churches in China have “zeal without knowledge“ regarding the Great Commission. There are numbers of cross-cultural missionaries that have been sent out by house churches in China, but 90% give up and return to China as failures within months. Many are so discouraged they don’t re-engage in any sort of ministry after arriving back in China.
Overall, China’s churches lack even a basic understanding of how to prepare, support, or nurture cross-cultural missionaries, whether before, during, or after they are deployed to the field. This is the root cause of such high attrition, at great cost to both the workers and the field.
Pray that God would use this ministry to powerfully equip cross-cultural missionaries with spiritual disciplines, Spirit-filled truth, and cultural understanding to be powerfully prepared for the mission field.
WHO WE SERVE
This ministry equips existing Chinese cross-cultural missionaries, mission candidates, and leading missionary senders.
Pray for each Chinese missionary participating in training and preparing for the mission field—that God would be their guide and that they would cling to Him closely as God prepares them through this training.
FOCUS PROJECT
This ministry works to translate, publish, and distribute carefully selected missions textbooks. Previously, there have been virtually none available in Chinese.
This ministry also provides training seminars that are interactive and practical as well as deeply thought-provoking. Subjects include culture shock, specific issues and strategies for Muslims, Animists, Buddhists and the non-religious, stresses on marriages and families, team building, and cultural anthropology. Global Christian experts in these fields are involved.
Lastly, this ministry offers actual guided internship experiences to Chinese missionaries in cross-cultural settings.
The response to these services by recipients has been enthusiastic appreciation with urgent requests for more.
Pray that each participant would retain what they have learned, be able to apply it in difficult ministry contexts, and through these courses be prepared by God to endure the challenges of the mission field.
Prayerfully consider supporting the strategic training of these Chinese missionaries!